I consider this video required reading for any and all Tildes community members who regularly use YouTube. Why? Even if you have never watched Mr. Beast and never plan to engage with his...
I consider this video required reading for any and all Tildes community members who regularly use YouTube.
Why?
Even if you have never watched Mr. Beast and never plan to engage with his creations, this videoessay methodically diagnoses then dismantles the hubris of the most influential content creator on the platform. Many of the techniques exposed—the hollow manufactured clickbait thumbnails, limited word count on video titles, the unethical targeting of a youth audience—are being actively copied by other YouTubers following in Mr. Beast's footsteps.
Youtube was a place I had come to know and love as a young netizen. A source of cat videos or videoessays or niche hobby interests. This is not to say I am using nostalgia as a defense, however; the context is worth mentioning since I (like many of Tildes) have watched it evolve over the years. Early YouTube was much less regulated, yes, but it struggled with harassment and content moderation. In comparison to the present day? Well, now it is actively adversarial to its userbase—especially so when it promotes content such as Mr. Beast and those imitating his success. You may have noticed the bitter taste in your mouth, as I have, when coming across recommended videos that would not seem out of place in a predatory 2000s-era advertisement banner. Or perhaps you have noticed a favorite YouTuber altering their video structures to be more exploitative and less informative? One could make an argument that the creator is now incentivized to make content that demands your attention but does not necessarily demand quality.
This also has the unintended consequence of putting more pressure on users to actively curate their media diet lest they be recommended fear-mongering political videos, shock content, or worse. For the less media literate YouTube is of course pleased to serve exploitative content to retain viewership. I was curious and created a new account using an international VPN to check out what a new user might see: the homepage (before I stopped scrolling past two pages, since they added an endless scroll feature circa 2024) counted a total of 7 breaking news clickbait videos (from media organizations so biased they would be considered "deprecated" and unfit to be cited as reliable sources by Wikipedia), 3 Mr. Beast videos, a 24/7 livestream music channel, an advertisement for a local political organization, and an advertisement for OpenAI.
What about the Why was I invited to Beast Studios video itself?
I have really come to love Dan Olson of Folding Ideas, having first come across his work when he called out a lazy trend of fellow YouTubers brazenly retelling movie plots under the false pretense of legitimate cinematic critique. As a self-described documentarian, Dan has an English professor's grasp of rhetoric and persuasion, which he makes expert use of when arguing why you should care about what he cares about. His videos keep a quick pace when balancing an insightful mix of witty commentary, artistic asides, and passionate character teardowns.
You might be interested to hear that over the course of the past year I have basically entirely cut YouTube out of my life having noticed how much I didn't like the quality of the content on there...
You might be interested to hear that over the course of the past year I have basically entirely cut YouTube out of my life having noticed how much I didn't like the quality of the content on there any more.
I used to get a real kick out of seeing people doing or talking about stuff they're passionate about on there, and I've found that now such a majority of the content served to me feels like it was made because people with YouTube as source of income needed to churn out another piece of content.
I suspect that if one were to magic away the financial motivation, 99% of content on YouTube would never be made, and that is a crying shame - it basically completely obscures the (proportionally) small amount of content on there that I feel would enrich my life.
It’s not a recommendation I make for casuals but if you’re sufficiently curmudgeonly about YouTube recommendations and ads, and willing to put up with some software jank to get rid of it… you may...
It’s not a recommendation I make for casuals but if you’re sufficiently curmudgeonly about YouTube recommendations and ads, and willing to put up with some software jank to get rid of it… you may find that FreeTube is a better experience. You can remove all of the algorithmic nonsense, autoplay, and UI distractions. It strips out ads and supports SponsorBlock. You can manage your own subscriptions which are stored locally, not using a YouTube account. Since I started using the app exclusively, all my biggest annoyances with YouTube have disappeared. I just see the videos I’m looking for with none of the extra cruft.
It’s FOSS maintained by a small dev team, and it’s perpetually in a cat-and-mouse game with YouTube which is always trying to interfere with how it works. So anyone using it should be aware that it can break suddenly, and can take weeks for the devs to ship a fix for it. It’s still worth the hassle, IMHO, but not everyone’s going to come to that same conclusion.
That's cool, thanks for the info! I think for me the issue is the type of content YouTube fosters rather than the experience of the platform/recommendations/etc. I already use ublock and sponsor...
That's cool, thanks for the info! I think for me the issue is the type of content YouTube fosters rather than the experience of the platform/recommendations/etc. I already use ublock and sponsor block (perhaps? The one I use highlights sponsor sections and you can press enter to skip) and that blocks the annoyance of YouTube effectively for me.
For me it's that I've grown weary in regard content made for the sake of making content, which YouTube as a medium and the financial motivation there strongly encourages, and too high a proportion of videos I've watched on YouTube (even only considering videos from channels that I actively like the content of) feel like content made to pay the bills rather than content madeout of passion or to enrich the life of the viewer.
My YouTube/Google account is so old that the algorithm has never once recommended a Mr Beast video to me. From Folding Ideas, I guess it's kind of a infinitely worse Mark Rober channel with any...
My YouTube/Google account is so old that the algorithm has never once recommended a Mr Beast video to me. From Folding Ideas, I guess it's kind of a infinitely worse Mark Rober channel with any pretenses of fun or science or squirrel cuteness or charity stripped away, a sort of Running Man Ow My Balls cheap Hunger Games cesspool of a channel.
I only knew of the name from occasionally coming across a headline about certain lawsuits with his brand. ( Imagine my horror one day, when I looked over at a nephew's feed. I fear for our children ) Regardless of my ignorance, many of the Beastly things I was instantly able to recognize in nearly everything in my own feed: the stupid bolded lettering for attention, the exaggerated thumbnail that never appears in the video itself, the preview spoiler before the opening, the begging for Comments Likes Subscribes*, the sponsorship money to film people suffering, and the sinking of quality channels that refuse to conform to the almighty algorithm. It might not be Jimmy's fault: perhaps he was exceptionally lucky when the Google algorithm picked him to spotlight, and had it picked anyone else, that other person would have "invented" all these algo optimisation tricks.
But anyway, I consider Dan Olson a filmmaker. His I don't know James Rolfe is a feature film: a masterclass in story telling and use of visual medium. Upon watching this one, I wanted to post here for discussion but really wasn't sure where it fits under. Thanks for posting
re: Comment Like Subscribes, acronym CLS, I've always mentally read as 痴撚線, or cray-effin-zy in Cantonese. It's about how annoyed I feel by it. But that's how channels get funded....
Olsen released a follow-up video today reviewing Season 2 of Beast Games. It's a scathing critique of the mediocrity of a (somehow) $100M production. He also had a discussion with Mr. Beat a few...
Olsen released a follow-up video today reviewing Season 2 of Beast Games. It's a scathing critique of the mediocrity of a (somehow) $100M production.
He also had a discussion with Mr. Beat a few days ago about their experiences with Mr. Beast and Beast Industries.
The biggest indictment of the entire operation to me was using an Alexa 65 as an A camera for a game show that is 95% B-roll by volume. That camera shoots in 2.4 x 1 by default, he's not even...
The biggest indictment of the entire operation to me was using an Alexa 65 as an A camera for a game show that is 95% B-roll by volume.
That camera shoots in 2.4 x 1 by default, he's not even using most of that sensor when shooting in 16:9-style 4K (which you wouldn't do, but he's been shown to be incompetent in everything else, so I can only assume).
He could also be using it full frame and then cropping the video in after the fact during the edit. I’ve done that with my Ursa a few times just to get more detail or headroom during shoots I know...
He could also be using it full frame and then cropping the video in after the fact during the edit.
I’ve done that with my Ursa a few times just to get more detail or headroom during shoots I know sill have a lot of action (you get get a bit more resolution on that camera if you’re willing to give up 16:9).
Either way, it is way overkill for what they’re doing.
I hope that's what they're doing, especially with how dark it's in that sound stage and you'd kind of have to be binning down, but considering how incompetent they've been I have little hope. The...
I hope that's what they're doing, especially with how dark it's in that sound stage and you'd kind of have to be binning down, but considering how incompetent they've been I have little hope. The "Two Drink Limit" sign in the editing bay is also telling a different story.
So I’m not using YouTube beyond looking up how to reset the interval nagging of my car, and I despise Mr. Beast, but I found listening to this video while working on the house very enjoyable....
So I’m not using YouTube beyond looking up how to reset the interval nagging of my car, and I despise Mr. Beast, but I found listening to this video while working on the house very enjoyable. There were a few parts that made me laugh out loud because of the absurdity of it all. Loved the conclusion about business and creativity, and how they are only focused on the business side of things. Really insightful. Not sure if the visuals of this video added anything, just listening to it seemed to work just as well.
You'll have missed several great visual gags and some clips giving context to what he was discussing but largely the main themes and points of the video stand without them. Dan does a great job on...
You'll have missed several great visual gags and some clips giving context to what he was discussing but largely the main themes and points of the video stand without them.
Dan does a great job on the visuals and I always watch his videos (at least the first time), but I think he intentionally designs videos to also mostly work audio only knowing a probably not insignificant amount of viewers may be listening more than watching.
Spoilers for the answer to the video title's question The two most interesting possible answers Dan Olson gives for "Why was I invited to Beast Studios?" were, for me: To settle a bet They want to...
Spoilers for the answer to the video title's question
The two most interesting possible answers Dan Olson gives for "Why was I invited to Beast Studios?" were, for me:
To settle a bet
They want to know how to grow a fandom (as opposed to an algorithm-based ephemeral audience)
If it's to settle a bet I would love to know what the bet was; I don't recall Olson speculating too much, but it's funny to imagine a blended Beast/Prime staff speculating on whether the production issues they've noticed internally are obvious to a critical audience.
I'm also curious if they've tried at all to grow a fandom; surely they have the budget to hire a PR consultant to give them specific pointers if they want it, but from what I've seen the Beast team just kind of...wings everything? Olson mentions either an absence of playtesting (or incomplete testing) for things like the obstacle course (resulting in unintended conflicts); surely with a Beast budget they could do a Knives Out and just hire a game designer?
The kind of explosive success of Beast videos is interesting in comparison with other streamers/YouTubers that I've seen grow from small, loyal audiences to slightly larger, still loyal audiences; these content creators (despite having small audiences compared to Mr. Beast) still get what I think of as "large" sponsors because they have a core following.
Those might be the more interesting answers, but I really think there’s a solid chance that it was even less thought out than even that. There must have been some impetus, but given Dan’s...
Those might be the more interesting answers, but I really think there’s a solid chance that it was even less thought out than even that. There must have been some impetus, but given Dan’s breakdown and the general lack of thinking on display from Beast’s team, they may well have even forgotten it by the time the YouTubers arrived. You would think they’d have given the guests some kind of prompting if there was a plan.
I watched both videos today in a weird day-off fever dream (not really) of exploration on why Folding Ideas, of all people, first was invited to the Beast Games set (he explains, they seemed to...
I watched both videos today in a weird day-off fever dream (not really) of exploration on why Folding Ideas, of all people, first was invited to the Beast Games set (he explains, they seemed to have chosen critics), and then his breakdown of the season which was basically poorly-constructed games for reality TV.
I watched quite a few of his videos years ago and sort of walked away from video essayists, but I had the right combination of time and curiosity for the two+ hours this journey took and it was definitely interesting. He's not negative, usually never is anyway, but it was informative, and I felt informed the whole thing, especially from the perspective of somebody who has never given two hoots about Mr. Beast, aside from being severely disappointed by his candy bar.
There’s an unintended third video that I find more interesting than the addendum. In it, a well-intentioned but unprepared and naive Mr. Beat (without the “S”) tries to defend MrBeast. As a...
There’s an unintended third video that I find more interesting than the addendum. In it, a well-intentioned but unprepared and naive Mr. Beat (without the “S”) tries to defend MrBeast. As a result, Dan goes into more detail about what happened behind the scenes, including the company’s financial situation, its obsession with being the biggest, how it hides technicalities for the sake of appearances, and the actual reason they gave Dan for inviting him.
I feel sort of bad for Mr Beat because it seems like he innocently walked into the Beast world, was treated like a VIP, his kids were happy, and his channel benefited, so he wasn't looking super...
I feel sort of bad for Mr Beat because it seems like he innocently walked into the Beast world, was treated like a VIP, his kids were happy, and his channel benefited, so he wasn't looking super hard for reasons to dislike a man who, by all his experience and even Dan confirmed, was pleasant to spend time with in person.
I'm willing to give Mr Beast the benefit of some doubt, that he's a (relatively) young person who suddenly found enormous success, immediately got surrounded by cult like worshippers and scammers and hangers-on, and basically is by now in way over his head on what to do about this empire / channel. The working conditions are horrendous for staff and guests maybe due to lack of experience and understanding he needs to hire good people or inability to discern good people from bad. The food franchise and meal bars are a complete disaster again, maybe he shook hands with grifters and have no ability to sniff out BS profiteers.
Perhaps the invitation to quality channels like Folding Ideas is an attempt to "do better", but he still needs to work out how to be able to discern good advice.
At some point, I think this is giving Mr Beast Industries way too much benefit of the doubt, or at least framing his failings in way too positively a way. I prefer how Dan phrased it in the linked...
I'm willing to give Mr Beast the benefit of some doubt, that he's a (relatively) young person who suddenly found enormous success, immediately got surrounded by cult like worshippers and scammers and hangers-on, and basically is by now in way over his head on what to do about this empire / channel.
At some point, I think this is giving Mr Beast Industries way too much benefit of the doubt, or at least framing his failings in way too positively a way. I prefer how Dan phrased it in the linked video -- the way Beast Industries is run is reckless and incompetent. Things like safety and sexual harassment are only taken remotely seriously after they're already mired in litigation over them. Several of his controversies are over things that do not necessarily require business acumen to avoid them (e.g., Saudi Arabia).
I also think that this is insulting to Mr Beast when it comes to his actual business acumen. The success of Mr Beast wasn't an accident and Jimmy Donaldson was personally responsible for a lot of that -- he is a charismatic guy and has some skill and instinct for certain parts of business. His failures in other aspects of business are due to either a deliberate naivety or a refusal to hire people who know what they're doing, because he is not some innocent rube who is not capable of hiring people who are experienced in these aspects of business.
I consider this video required reading for any and all Tildes community members who regularly use YouTube.
Why?
Even if you have never watched Mr. Beast and never plan to engage with his creations, this videoessay methodically diagnoses then dismantles the hubris of the most influential content creator on the platform. Many of the techniques exposed—the hollow manufactured clickbait thumbnails, limited word count on video titles, the unethical targeting of a youth audience—are being actively copied by other YouTubers following in Mr. Beast's footsteps.
Youtube was a place I had come to know and love as a young netizen. A source of cat videos or videoessays or niche hobby interests. This is not to say I am using nostalgia as a defense, however; the context is worth mentioning since I (like many of Tildes) have watched it evolve over the years. Early YouTube was much less regulated, yes, but it struggled with harassment and content moderation. In comparison to the present day? Well, now it is actively adversarial to its userbase—especially so when it promotes content such as Mr. Beast and those imitating his success. You may have noticed the bitter taste in your mouth, as I have, when coming across recommended videos that would not seem out of place in a predatory 2000s-era advertisement banner. Or perhaps you have noticed a favorite YouTuber altering their video structures to be more exploitative and less informative? One could make an argument that the creator is now incentivized to make content that demands your attention but does not necessarily demand quality.
This also has the unintended consequence of putting more pressure on users to actively curate their media diet lest they be recommended fear-mongering political videos, shock content, or worse. For the less media literate YouTube is of course pleased to serve exploitative content to retain viewership. I was curious and created a new account using an international VPN to check out what a new user might see: the homepage (before I stopped scrolling past two pages, since they added an endless scroll feature circa 2024) counted a total of 7 breaking news clickbait videos (from media organizations so biased they would be considered "deprecated" and unfit to be cited as reliable sources by Wikipedia), 3 Mr. Beast videos, a 24/7 livestream music channel, an advertisement for a local political organization, and an advertisement for OpenAI.
What about the Why was I invited to Beast Studios video itself?
I have really come to love Dan Olson of Folding Ideas, having first come across his work when he called out a lazy trend of fellow YouTubers brazenly retelling movie plots under the false pretense of legitimate cinematic critique. As a self-described documentarian, Dan has an English professor's grasp of rhetoric and persuasion, which he makes expert use of when arguing why you should care about what he cares about. His videos keep a quick pace when balancing an insightful mix of witty commentary, artistic asides, and passionate character teardowns.
You might be interested to hear that over the course of the past year I have basically entirely cut YouTube out of my life having noticed how much I didn't like the quality of the content on there any more.
I used to get a real kick out of seeing people doing or talking about stuff they're passionate about on there, and I've found that now such a majority of the content served to me feels like it was made because people with YouTube as source of income needed to churn out another piece of content.
I suspect that if one were to magic away the financial motivation, 99% of content on YouTube would never be made, and that is a crying shame - it basically completely obscures the (proportionally) small amount of content on there that I feel would enrich my life.
It’s not a recommendation I make for casuals but if you’re sufficiently curmudgeonly about YouTube recommendations and ads, and willing to put up with some software jank to get rid of it… you may find that FreeTube is a better experience. You can remove all of the algorithmic nonsense, autoplay, and UI distractions. It strips out ads and supports SponsorBlock. You can manage your own subscriptions which are stored locally, not using a YouTube account. Since I started using the app exclusively, all my biggest annoyances with YouTube have disappeared. I just see the videos I’m looking for with none of the extra cruft.
It’s FOSS maintained by a small dev team, and it’s perpetually in a cat-and-mouse game with YouTube which is always trying to interfere with how it works. So anyone using it should be aware that it can break suddenly, and can take weeks for the devs to ship a fix for it. It’s still worth the hassle, IMHO, but not everyone’s going to come to that same conclusion.
That's cool, thanks for the info! I think for me the issue is the type of content YouTube fosters rather than the experience of the platform/recommendations/etc. I already use ublock and sponsor block (perhaps? The one I use highlights sponsor sections and you can press enter to skip) and that blocks the annoyance of YouTube effectively for me.
For me it's that I've grown weary in regard content made for the sake of making content, which YouTube as a medium and the financial motivation there strongly encourages, and too high a proportion of videos I've watched on YouTube (even only considering videos from channels that I actively like the content of) feel like content made to pay the bills rather than content madeout of passion or to enrich the life of the viewer.
I appreciate you suggesting the above though :)
My YouTube/Google account is so old that the algorithm has never once recommended a Mr Beast video to me. From Folding Ideas, I guess it's kind of a infinitely worse Mark Rober channel with any pretenses of fun or science or squirrel cuteness or charity stripped away, a sort of Running Man Ow My Balls cheap Hunger Games cesspool of a channel.
I only knew of the name from occasionally coming across a headline about certain lawsuits with his brand. ( Imagine my horror one day, when I looked over at a nephew's feed. I fear for our children ) Regardless of my ignorance, many of the Beastly things I was instantly able to recognize in nearly everything in my own feed: the stupid bolded lettering for attention, the exaggerated thumbnail that never appears in the video itself, the preview spoiler before the opening, the begging for Comments Likes Subscribes*, the sponsorship money to film people suffering, and the sinking of quality channels that refuse to conform to the almighty algorithm. It might not be Jimmy's fault: perhaps he was exceptionally lucky when the Google algorithm picked him to spotlight, and had it picked anyone else, that other person would have "invented" all these algo optimisation tricks.
But anyway, I consider Dan Olson a filmmaker. His I don't know James Rolfe is a feature film: a masterclass in story telling and use of visual medium. Upon watching this one, I wanted to post here for discussion but really wasn't sure where it fits under. Thanks for posting
re: Comment Like Subscribes, acronym CLS, I've always mentally read as 痴撚線, or cray-effin-zy in Cantonese. It's about how annoyed I feel by it. But that's how channels get funded....
Olsen released a follow-up video today reviewing Season 2 of Beast Games. It's a scathing critique of the mediocrity of a (somehow) $100M production.
He also had a discussion with Mr. Beat a few days ago about their experiences with Mr. Beast and Beast Industries.
I love one of the top comments that says, this unprecedented rate of Folding Ideas videos is a recession indicator.
I was more amused by:
The biggest indictment of the entire operation to me was using an Alexa 65 as an A camera for a game show that is 95% B-roll by volume.
That camera shoots in 2.4 x 1 by default, he's not even using most of that sensor when shooting in 16:9-style 4K (which you wouldn't do, but he's been shown to be incompetent in everything else, so I can only assume).
He could also be using it full frame and then cropping the video in after the fact during the edit.
I’ve done that with my Ursa a few times just to get more detail or headroom during shoots I know sill have a lot of action (you get get a bit more resolution on that camera if you’re willing to give up 16:9).
Either way, it is way overkill for what they’re doing.
I hope that's what they're doing, especially with how dark it's in that sound stage and you'd kind of have to be binning down, but considering how incompetent they've been I have little hope. The "Two Drink Limit" sign in the editing bay is also telling a different story.
So I’m not using YouTube beyond looking up how to reset the interval nagging of my car, and I despise Mr. Beast, but I found listening to this video while working on the house very enjoyable. There were a few parts that made me laugh out loud because of the absurdity of it all. Loved the conclusion about business and creativity, and how they are only focused on the business side of things. Really insightful. Not sure if the visuals of this video added anything, just listening to it seemed to work just as well.
You'll have missed several great visual gags and some clips giving context to what he was discussing but largely the main themes and points of the video stand without them.
Dan does a great job on the visuals and I always watch his videos (at least the first time), but I think he intentionally designs videos to also mostly work audio only knowing a probably not insignificant amount of viewers may be listening more than watching.
Spoilers for the answer to the video title's question
The two most interesting possible answers Dan Olson gives for "Why was I invited to Beast Studios?" were, for me:If it's to settle a bet I would love to know what the bet was; I don't recall Olson speculating too much, but it's funny to imagine a blended Beast/Prime staff speculating on whether the production issues they've noticed internally are obvious to a critical audience.
I'm also curious if they've tried at all to grow a fandom; surely they have the budget to hire a PR consultant to give them specific pointers if they want it, but from what I've seen the Beast team just kind of...wings everything? Olson mentions either an absence of playtesting (or incomplete testing) for things like the obstacle course (resulting in unintended conflicts); surely with a Beast budget they could do a Knives Out and just hire a game designer?
The kind of explosive success of Beast videos is interesting in comparison with other streamers/YouTubers that I've seen grow from small, loyal audiences to slightly larger, still loyal audiences; these content creators (despite having small audiences compared to Mr. Beast) still get what I think of as "large" sponsors because they have a core following.
Those might be the more interesting answers, but I really think there’s a solid chance that it was even less thought out than even that. There must have been some impetus, but given Dan’s breakdown and the general lack of thinking on display from Beast’s team, they may well have even forgotten it by the time the YouTubers arrived. You would think they’d have given the guests some kind of prompting if there was a plan.
I watched both videos today in a weird day-off fever dream (not really) of exploration on why Folding Ideas, of all people, first was invited to the Beast Games set (he explains, they seemed to have chosen critics), and then his breakdown of the season which was basically poorly-constructed games for reality TV.
I watched quite a few of his videos years ago and sort of walked away from video essayists, but I had the right combination of time and curiosity for the two+ hours this journey took and it was definitely interesting. He's not negative, usually never is anyway, but it was informative, and I felt informed the whole thing, especially from the perspective of somebody who has never given two hoots about Mr. Beast, aside from being severely disappointed by his candy bar.
There’s an unintended third video that I find more interesting than the addendum. In it, a well-intentioned but unprepared and naive Mr. Beat (without the “S”) tries to defend MrBeast. As a result, Dan goes into more detail about what happened behind the scenes, including the company’s financial situation, its obsession with being the biggest, how it hides technicalities for the sake of appearances, and the actual reason they gave Dan for inviting him.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A6aL9C3jk1k
I feel sort of bad for Mr Beat because it seems like he innocently walked into the Beast world, was treated like a VIP, his kids were happy, and his channel benefited, so he wasn't looking super hard for reasons to dislike a man who, by all his experience and even Dan confirmed, was pleasant to spend time with in person.
I'm willing to give Mr Beast the benefit of some doubt, that he's a (relatively) young person who suddenly found enormous success, immediately got surrounded by cult like worshippers and scammers and hangers-on, and basically is by now in way over his head on what to do about this empire / channel. The working conditions are horrendous for staff and guests maybe due to lack of experience and understanding he needs to hire good people or inability to discern good people from bad. The food franchise and meal bars are a complete disaster again, maybe he shook hands with grifters and have no ability to sniff out BS profiteers.
Perhaps the invitation to quality channels like Folding Ideas is an attempt to "do better", but he still needs to work out how to be able to discern good advice.
At some point, I think this is giving Mr Beast Industries way too much benefit of the doubt, or at least framing his failings in way too positively a way. I prefer how Dan phrased it in the linked video -- the way Beast Industries is run is reckless and incompetent. Things like safety and sexual harassment are only taken remotely seriously after they're already mired in litigation over them. Several of his controversies are over things that do not necessarily require business acumen to avoid them (e.g., Saudi Arabia).
I also think that this is insulting to Mr Beast when it comes to his actual business acumen. The success of Mr Beast wasn't an accident and Jimmy Donaldson was personally responsible for a lot of that -- he is a charismatic guy and has some skill and instinct for certain parts of business. His failures in other aspects of business are due to either a deliberate naivety or a refusal to hire people who know what they're doing, because he is not some innocent rube who is not capable of hiring people who are experienced in these aspects of business.